. . . continued . . .
Dear Sister,
“Observe everything . . . trust nobody. . . despise your mother. . . effort is vulgar . . .things were better in the eighteenth century.” From “Bad News” by Edward St. Aubyn.
The above are the mottos of Patrick’s late father, David Melrose, which echo on in the young man’s drug-addled brain, splicing him up into ever sicker fragments of his fractured soul. The damage a parent can do is what ultimately brings whole tribes to war. We only have the way we were raised to fall back on, and if it’s either too soft or too hard a place to land, we dread all leaps of faith and damn all believers as floaty. It’s quicker to sky dive and bungy jump. Life as a tournament of short, sharp shocks pushes time forward towards the trophy of a glorious death. It’s all nonsensical! The world’s gone made. But when was it ever sane, sound, whole?
A nation is but a collection of individuals. Individuals are no longer to be formed by a nation. We are going through a sticky patch of transition. This fifth manvantra is about coming of age. It shows us up as childish, petulant, spoiled, and very fearful. Fear is a necessary dragon, but it is time to become Michaelic about it. There will come a time when there is no protection, defense, prevention, insurance left. Then what? Just a man and his (s)word.
What kind of a man was this David Melrose?! I hope you don’t take me to for a David Melrose in the way you allege to me a relentless imposition of will! If you insist I impose so brutally my will upon you, then you might as well call me a sadist. When is wilful imposition not a form of sadism, after all? It is, at any rate, not loving kindness.
Tackling problems is not love.
Nor is letting go forgetting , and my desire to do precisely that, notwithstanding, may be proving your point that I am too impulsive and extreme. It is resentment speaking, I well hear this; to never re-member you, like an Isis, a wise one, a Kwan-Yin, a compassionate one, gathering up the parts you left embedded in my soul to go off insearch of the woman they might belong to. It’s the self-pity of not handling disappointment like an adult. But how else will it go, if I never take the first step again?
What if, actually, all be said and told, I seldom speak of my actual plans? (Maybe I have none?) You wouldn’t be able to tell, of course, not you, but not anyone else, either, that I am as secretive as the next victim of abuse and as abusive as the psycho addicted to victimhood. Or so you make it sound, when you charge me with an attitude to life that is black and white, all or nothing and someone who resorts to emotional blackmail.
I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. Or I wish I could be that pompous. Instead, I worry if you are beyond saving, if you are able to misunderstand a person that simplistically.
I will be the first to admit that finding it hard to connect with other human-beings can be demoralising. It helps to realise, however, that everybody is disappointed by somebody, and that it takes practice to steer the middle course (not too intimate, not too superficial). If you haven’t been taught the ropes as a child, you have to start from scratch at 21. Make sure you complete the course by 42 or you will have no time left for an internship.
First off, you need to be prepared to take a practical in child care. This is to practice taking off the dunce’s cap of shame. Take your inner child by the hand, go feed the ducks, make a cup of cocoa and ask her to grow up. You at 45 are already there, it’s not so scary, come on now, coax her, and take those baby-steps towards integration.
Children should be read to endlessly. It trains the inner ear and builds up listening stamina. They say all children like being read to, but they mainly like the attention and the soothing sound of caring voice. Few really are able to imagine the story vividly. It takes a good story teller to animate the tale without turning the characters into cartoons. Circuses and story tellers are not my personal cup of tea but I found Nicole and Martin inspirational and brought my training up another level.
Just like a throrough study of the Grimm stories with the help of anthroposophical insights, these artists with glowing souls showed up my inhibitions to me, which lie bunched up in a kind of refusal to listen too deeply for fear of hearing too much and helping too little. I thought we all suffered from this, but most people are afraid of comprehending too little and feeling forlorn.
Then again, we all know nothing.
We learn from abused children and the splintered adults they become, that immeasurable, lasting and all-pervading damage can be done to a tender soul by inaccurate intent. Malformative etheric force retards her growth and contorts her geometric resonance and restricts her capacity. An entire potential is lost. This travesty is barely noted by society at large. We struggle to see the all in the one and therfore never get it right for community building.
It is no different for the autistic soul, where the astral/ego is not harmoniously interactive with the etheric/physical. Therapy or rehabilitation has to take place on the level of spiritual alignment. With all the opposition to this (fanciful) notion around, healing is hard to achieve. It is also not so straightfoward as taking some eurythmy sessions. A new understanding of illness and health is required, I am convinced. Healing may not take place on a tangible level (recall how the sense of touch- tangere - has to change? It ties into the resurrection as in the story set in the garden of Gethsamene).
Meister von Liesborn, 1498.
We need to be very accurate in our diagnoses, too. What is the cause of malformative etheric flow? What does it exactly look like? Is it impaired, insufficient, excessive, corrupted? Which levels of being does it effect? What is its point of entry, and when and how did it enter at all? To gloss over everything and judge that it is an error of soul is not very medical or scientific. To treat it either as something out of DSM V (a psychiatric illness) or to pretend nothing is wrong (leave undiagnosed) is going to be the seed of something calamitous.
Man is not ready to understand autism in terms of light and darkness , so then there is not much new ground we will be able to cover for now.
. . . to be continued . . .
